"The overall market did a little bit better in 2003 than what was expected, and the fourth quarter was particularly strong," Cox told Enterprise Storage Forum. "This confirms what some of the storage executives have been saying, which is that the economy is getting a little better."

The worldwide external controller-based disk storage market increased 6% to $12.89 billion in 2003, according to Gartner's numbers released today.

Another encouraging sign was that the high-end storage market began to rebound. "It was a very good year on the high end," Cox said.

Cox expects the industry to grow 7.9% in 2004, a healthy, if not quite booming, rate. "I don't think the market will ever get back to the growth rates of 1998-1999, when it was growing 20% a year," he added.

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HP maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 21.7% revenue share, according to IDC's numbers, followed by EMC and IBM. Among the top 5 suppliers, Dell and EMC posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during the fourth quarter, with 50.0% and 20.5% growth respectively.

EMC enjoyed a resurgence, reversing market share loss in the worldwide external controller-based disk storage market with 7% growth and a 0.4% share gain, according to Gartner, for $2.65 billion in revenues and a 20.6% share.

Number two player HP grew sales 8% and also added 0.4% to its market share, for a total of $2.39 billion in sales and an 18.6% share.

The number three through five vendors – IBM , Hitachi/HDS , and Sun – all lost share on the year. Cox said IBM's FAStT line was "very strong," but Big Blue's Shark line lost a bit of ground to EMC's resurgent Symmetrix line. Hitachi was expected to lose ground because of developments in its business with HP and Sun, according to Cox.

Number six vendor Dell outpaced them all, growing 44% and gaining 1.3% market share. Dell now has 4.9% of the disk storage market.

That's good news for EMC, since much of Dell's storage sales come from the companies' CLARiiON partnership.

The Dell-EMC partnership is a "win-win proposition for both companies," Cox said. Dell's manufacturing and sales increase EMC's volume "so much that it
helps reduce the cost of goods and burden" for EMC.

EMC enjoyed similar results in the external RAID disk storage systems and network-attached storage (NAS) markets, with IDC's year-end report confirming that the company retained pole position in both market segments. In fact, EMC widened its lead in the RAID market, with the highest overall increase in market share (1.7) next to partner Dell's 1.8.